It's one of the warmest things a grandparent can say: you're the apple of my eye. Everyone knows it means you're cherished above all others. But have you ever stopped to wonder what an apple has to do with your eye?
Here's the short answer: originally, the apple of the eye was simply the pupil, the dark opening at the center of the eye. Sometimes it meant the whole eyeball. Over time, the phrase came to describe a person someone treasures and protects, as carefully as they'd guard their own eye.
A Phrase More Than 1,000 Years Old
This expression is truly ancient. Its earliest known appearance is in a ninth-century Old English translation of a Latin work called Cura pastoralis, a book of guidance for church leaders. The translation is traditionally attributed to Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxon king.
Even in Shakespeare's day, the phrase still meant the pupil. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, written in the 1590s, the fairy king Oberon squeezes a magic love potion into a sleeping man's eyes and chants, sink in apple of his eye. In Love's Labor's Lost, a character talks about laughing upon the apple of her eye.
How It Found Its Way Into the Bible
Many Americans know the phrase from the King James Bible of 1611. In Deuteronomy, God keeps his people as the apple of his eye. In Psalm 17, the writer prays, keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings. Proverbs advises keeping God's law as the apple of thine eye, and in Zechariah, the Lord warns that he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.
Here's a surprising twist: the apple part is English, not Hebrew. The original Hebrew in most of these passages refers to the pupil, probably meaning the dark part of the eye. English translators simply used the familiar English idiom.
It's easy to see why the phrase took on its tender meaning. Your eyes are precious, and you protect them without even thinking. To be someone's apple of the eye is to be guarded just as instinctively.
The Little Person in Your Eye
The word pupil has its own charming story. It comes from the Latin pupilla, meaning doll or little girl. That's also why pupil can mean a schoolchild in English.
In a surprising number of unrelated languages, the word for the pupil of the eye originally meant little person. One likely reason is that when you look closely into someone's eye, you see a tiny reflection of yourself. Some people have even suggested the Hebrew word for pupil means little man of the eye, though that idea is debated.
A Look Inside the Real Apple
Your pupil isn't really a thing at all. It's an opening that lets light into the eye. The colored iris around it is made mostly of muscle, and it widens or narrows the pupil depending on how much light there is. In humans the pupil is round, but goats and sheep have sideways pupils, and some cats have vertical slits.
So the next time someone calls you the apple of their eye, take it as a very old compliment. It means you're as precious to them as the very center of their sight, and that's about as close as words can get.
